However, nothing referenced an exact item back then. Thanks to today's datamining, though, we have a better sense of what it will be. (Keep in mind that this is still speculation, with no actual items datamined yet--just icons, quests, and items that augment ilvl.)

New icons for a legendary axe, fist, gun, dagger, mace, shield, staff and sword have been datamined in today's patch.

This looks like a big step for Blizzard and it's going to leave a lot of people divided. On one hand, the idea of a legendary based on merit rather than class sounds fantastic; on the other, guilds will have a lot of trouble deciding who gets the first one of these. Hopefully the droprates are much higher and the system isn't as linear--or luck based--like previous legendaries have been. We think it might end up like the AQ40 epic weapon quests, where any class could loot the armaments and get a weapon with raid materials, but it was still a rare occurrence. It also seems like Blizzard has thought up a solution to one-tier wonder characters who just want a legendary without commitment by having the quest series extend across patches: Incoming....

The catch? Both of them deal with the future of Azeroth in different ways. Gamasutra analyzed the shortcomings of Cataclysm, interviewing players and even Blizzard employees to figure out what's in store. IGN took a more basic approach, going directly to the source with both Tom Chilton and WoW's art director explaining everything in their own words without leaving room for speculation.

IGN With Tom Chilton on 4.3

Chilton didn't waste time getting to the point in IGN's interview. He immediately started dropping juicy tidbits about the Deathwing encounter, saying: "The fight takes place in multiple different environments, you'll actually potentially get loot at different points in the encounter so it's broken up into larger scale overall. Players will start at Wyrmrest Temple and then eventually it progresses to players fighting on back flying towards the Maelstrom, trying to wrestle him to the ground, basically."

He explained further, turning to the three 5-man instances that have been on many players' minds. "They tie in from story standpoint," said Chilton. "Really the five man instances are all about building up to the Deathwing fight in a lot the same way that the five-man instances in Icecrown were building up to the king, so all of them are very tied together story-wise."

The interview then switched onward to transmogrification, where art director Chris Robinson gave his two cents. He said part of transmogrification's inspiration came from how he found TBC's armor to mismatch, even going as far as to call them "clown suits."

Robinson also explained the importance of class identity in WoW. "We do have to be careful about iconic class looks bleeding into other classes," he said. "That's one reason we have that restriction with transmogrification that you wouldn't be able to take a class-specific item and apply it to something for an item with a different class. I think that's important to protect integrity. When you see those demon wings you know 'Okay that's a warlock,' you know you can apply that to his tier twenty-one armor but it's still a warlock." Personally, I think anymore restrictions on transmogrification besides tier and class intended armor type (i.e. cloth for casters), and you have a feature that is too narrow and restrictive for players to truly enjoy. Why not let a Paladin wear a DPS warrior's offset pieces if they want to? What does the game lose by offering that?

Shortly after, Tom Chilton returned and explained void storage, dismissed Mists of Pandaria, and talked very candidly of World of Warcraft's decline. "If you look at, if you look at the way the population breaks down, we're at a point in our history where there are more people that played World of Warcraft but no longer play World of Warcraft than currently play World of Warcraft," Chilton admitted, before wrapping the interview up by focusing on future ways to help player retention and the growth of WoW.

Gamasutra on WoW's Decline

Staying on the same topic but switching both gears and participants, Gamasutra posted a piece after talking to dozens of prolific World of Warcraft developers, researchers, and players about the decline of World of Warcraft. The end result shines a lot of light into Blizzard's subscriber numbers, Cataclysm's changes, and the playerbase's ever-growing divide between "hardcore" and "casual" players.

The article in particular touches on a prevailing problem for World of Warcraft: Most people dislike Cataclysm. Even more problematically, most people can't explain why exactly--they just dislike it. Some players throw out difficulties as a reason, others blame the 10 and 25-man divide, and even talk about Titan taking away all of Blizzard's talent.

But what's the real source to blame? And can we fix it?

The game's age is the real issue is what Gamasutra ultimately concludes. Cataclysm had some failures that made the balance out of tune, but we're all in the same boat whether we're casual or not: the game is in decline because it's starting to reach a stale point. It needs new features and explorations at rates Blizzard can't keep up with. It's also hard to predict the future as World of Warcraft is sailing into uncharted territory--a place where no MMORPG has been so successful for so long in and one that ultimately is hard to maintain.

As for the second question, no one knows the answer. Gamasutra fittingly asks: "If WoW's mechanics are at a saturation point where adding variety doesn't add new complexity, and its charms as a social network are waning in comparison to other platforms, is this the beginning of the end?"

Of course, no one's willing to throw the towel in so soon. But it is an interesting thought to expand on. At what point does World of Warcraft end up like the iconic EverQuest did--do all virtual worlds inevitably have to die? Will it still be here in ten years? Fifteen? At what point does World of Warcraft retire to let another MMORPG into the limelight?

So Blizzard just posted a really weird picture to their Facebook of ethereal NPCs. A blue posted it with no explanation as presumably a teaser. At this point, it's probably a hint for either 4.3 or the next expansion; in particular, maybe it even hints towards a redone Outlands or further character customization. Whatever it does mean, though, it's pretty crazy.

How close is your guild to completing it? What class got it--how did you decide to give it to that lucky person?

15-Man Raids?

I've always liked the idea of 15-man raids. Of course, tuning would be a nightmare so it'll never happen, but hey! Even Blizzard thinks they would be a good number of players!

I think the should add 15 man raids in cataclsym. 10 is too little and 25 is too much. It's like the PERFECT number. So will we have 10/15/25 man raids. 15 mans will drop 3 pieces of gear following the 1Gear:5Players Ratio.

Please give your thought on this i would LOVE to see 15 man raids.

Edit:10Man-120VP 25Man-140VP so 15Man-130VP

I'd actually agree that 15 players make for a pretty optimal number of raiders, in terms of the logistics of forming a raid and class representation. The task of tuning raids for three separate sizes is one you probably won't see on our radar any time soon though.

Put on your tinfoil hats--it looks like an April Fools' joke may become a reality. Last week, Blizzard filed for a trademark for "Mists of Pandaria" under computer software. This is a common practice for the registration of expansion titles; for example, the Cataclysm was filed for trademark on June 26, 2009 and its domain was bought subsequently. Similarly, a Pandaria domain was also purchased last week.

This means that it's possible that the next expansion will be announced at BlizzCon and that it will be Mists of Pandaria.

Let the speculation run wild--what do you guys think? Is this our future expansion or a false alarm? Will the pandarens be a playable race for both sides, a neutral faction even though Blizzard has said that they like factions to be identifiable and distinct for horde and alliance? Or maybe their role will be more of a lore one, focusing on them as quest hubs and a central conflict?

Blizzard just posted the speculative end date to season 9 for PvP as soon as June 21st. While this isn't set in stone, it points to patch 4.2 and season 10 within a week after this. As such, our bets are on the last week of June or possibly the first week of July for 4.2, but we'll see. It's most likely that Firelands will have some sort of gated content if this release is so soon as there has been no heroic testing thus far and no indication that such encounters will be doable on live. Several fights still have major bugs, too, even on normal 25-man. As someone who has tested every encounter, I can say that it doesn't feel as completed as it usually does.

At any rate, hopefully Firelands' gating is not one as painful as Sunwell's was, if it indeed has one.

Arena and Rated Battleground Season 9 is scheduled to end as early as June 21. At that point we will determine who is eligible for the end-of-season rewards, a process that should take approximately one week. It's very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for Arena titles and/or the Vicious Gladiator’s Twilight Drake to refrain from transferring their characters to another realm or faction until after Season 9 ends. During the break between seasons, all Rated Battleground and Arena matches will be unavailable.

At the end of the season, Conquest Points will be converted to Honor Points, possibly exceeding the 4,000 point Honor cap. All Season 9 items will cost Honor Points (equivalent to their previous Conquest Point cost) when the season ends, with the exception of any items with rating requirements attached. These items will no longer be available for purchase.

The next Arena and Rated Battleground season will begin for level-85 players approximately one week after the end of Season 9 and will coincide with the awarding of Season 9 titles and mounts. At that time, any Honor accrued above the 4,000-point cap will be converted into gold at a rate of 35 silver per point. In addition, Season 10 rewards will be made available for purchase with Conquest Points awarded during the new season. All Team and Personal Ratings will be wiped when Season 10 begins. Matchmaking Ratings, however, will carry over into Season 10.

Fresh from a foray onto the PTR, Wowhead volunteers Neutronimity and Perculia have brought some exciting news about some notable additions to Azeroth. While they're not a new raid nor a new legendary, they're still important in their own way. After all, it's the little things that make World of Warcraft so memorable!

The first discovery was that there's a new map animation. When users open their maps, they will now see it. This was first brought to our attention a week ago by Wowhead user Satelitko. They even went as far as to make a video of the animation.

The second discovery, this time by Neutronimity, was that companion pets now stay with their owner through thick and thin. Did you hearth away? Zone? Or even log off? Don't worry, they'll stay summoned. A small change to be sure, but a very practical one; summoning your vanity pet every time you left an area was easy to forget.

Of course, we've saved the best for last. The third discovery is pretty big. It's also a little weird. Perculia discovered a brand new resort off in the mountains of the border between Feralas and Silithus while flying around on the PTR this morning. The amount of detail put into this location is tremendous. The area is a neutral Goblin town, its denizens from Gadgetzan, and there are a lot of resort guests around. These patrons enjoy fish burgers, sun bathing, swimming, and even dancing; they also include some notable figures, like Johnny Awesome (more like Johnny Sunburned nowadays, right?) and Gordan Tramsay. There's a Blood Elf wearing a new item model we've never seen before--a pair of rhinestone sunglasses. In the background, Goblins spray down mammoths on one side and piña coladas are served on the other.

Anyway, let's get to the screenshots as they speak for themselves and you can be sure we have a lot of them. However, we also have lot of questions. Is this an expansion of the Steam Pools? Is this a segue into dailies--either new cooking ones or Firelands' prequels? Could this somehow be related to a holiday? So far there are no datamined specifics, but with this place teeming with the life and sights to see that it is, don't be surprised if it becomes something important in relation to the upcoming patch.

Stompalina from the Rawrcast tipped me off to an article they had up on their website that takes a look at progression statistics for WotLK.

I thought this was really interesting to look at—it tracks how quickly people progressed through the starting content in WotLK versus how quickly they progressed through ICC, and what percentage of players are actually completing the content, and draws some interesting conclusions about what we can expect to see in Cataclysm.

So I was speaking with Draknorr, who has been doing some math about the release of the Celestial Steed mount pictured to the right.

His friend entered the queue for a mount, and at the time the queue was at almost exactly 100k, and the stock ticked from 91% to 90% as he watched. When it ticked down to 89%, there were 46k in the queue. That's around 54,000 mounts for every 1% of the total stock—or, I would guess, about 5 million total mounts.

So this means that every 1% of the stock, they've sold 50k mounts at $25 a piece. That's $1,250,000. At the time of this writing the queue was at 88%—making that $15,000,000 so far—and that's just in the United States. Holy cow.

Game Informer published yesterday an interview with Tom Chilton, game director for World of Warcraft, looking back on the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

They talk about how what classes we might have seen instead of Death Knights, graphical improvements, PvP, why Ulduar was chosen and even a brief discussion of the content patch between now and and Cataclysm.

Hint: It just might be a single-boss encounter in the Ruby Sanctum, inside Wyrmrest Temple!

For the final question, there’s been some rumors going around and I wanted to clear them up. You guys have wrapped up the main Lich King storyline. Icecrown is out there, which you guys have said is the final major raid for this expansion. But there are some rumors that there might be another content patch of some sort before Cataclysm releases.

That is a possibility. We can’t say for sure at this point, but we are looking into the possibility of having a boss in the Ruby Sanctum, which is another part of Wyrmrest Temple. It’s a little too early to have a lot of details on that, but I wouldn’t characterize it as a huge chunk of content. It’s not a patch 3.4 or anything.